Boundless

In her boundless series, Alice Varshou brings two types of temporal structures into confrontation: quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative structure represents the division of time into continuous intervals of days, seasons, and years. However, the qualitative structure lies outside this realm, creating an internal and cyclical framework for the course of life. In this sense, by entering the world of myths, human creation, and related stories, the artist raises a kind of desire and longing for a return to qualitative time, in which the passage of time has no meaning, and meaning is accompanied by a kind of stillness, extension, and at the same time, dynamism and the absolute dominance of good. Thus, in her works, she not only distances herself from quantitative, transient, and repetitive structures, but also, by journeying to the land of myths and the primordial myths, invites us to see, understand, and perceive the dominance of a kind of mythical morality in which everything is in absolute light and goodness, and evil has not yet come into being. And thus, painting is an arena for contemplation and the dynamic re-reading of creation and its story.

Sohrab Ahmadi
 

In her latest collection of artworks, Alice Varshou has depicted the concept of creation and the fusion of Adam and Eve. The elements of her paintings are simple and unpretentious. The earth, water, sky, tree and human create the mythical space of her paintings in a selective and fluid arrangement. I n the deepest or highest primordial world, the earth is the fertile mother of humankind. At this level, every rebirth is like a return to the origins and the birth of the cosmos. These paintings seem to be in the beginning of creation and in mythical realms, hence humans are painted without faces, or the snake, tree and water are depicted with a special purity.

You mixed water and soil
And from mud you created humans
(Rumi, The Masnavi)

In religious narrations, Adam is created from earth and Eve comes to being from Adam’s left rib.

In near eastern narratives, the serpent is both a symbol of evil being and a symbol of wise creature. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, it is a sinister being, while in ancient Eastern traditions, it is a symbol of wisdom and life. These two aspects are seen in Varshou’s paintings; in some places, she unites Adam and Eve, and in others, it is the cause of their separation from paradise.

In Varshou’s paintings, Adam and Eve seem to be like Mashya and Mashyana, in whom the relationship between humans, plants, earth, and sky is not yet severed, and waters, leaves, and sky flow through them like a current.

In this way, Varshou maintains her symbolic paintings in the linguistic space between conceptual expressionism, naive rendering, and powerful formalism, and in this way, she places paintings before us to contemplate the primordial world.

Behnam Kamrani